Caray, Caray!

Oficina Tovar:

Carmina still has her tongue in the Doc’s ear. Between pants & gasps, she repeats that if he really loved her he’d falsify the blood test. At least tell me why, he says, but she refuses. The Doc carefully weighs his training, career, professional ethics and reputation against Carmina’s bazongas, and…the bazongas lose! Go figure! Guess they didn’t weigh quite enough.

“You’ve lost me forever,” snarls Carmina. “And you’ve lost ME forever,” says Ed. Good doctor!

On her way out, Carmina takes advantage of Paloma’s lunch break to steal the address of the clinic in Mérida. Hey, it’s only strike one – she’s not out yet.

Procesadora La Anita:

Damián snags Braulio to show los Landuchi around the factory. Florencia’s first observation is that the workers just look so tacky in their little outfits – couldn’t Dam make them wear something cuter? It’s not a casa de modas, he snaps. Really, girl.

Everybody puts on hair nets and dust masks for the Learning Channel tour of habaneros getting bathed & fluffed. Even with only their eyes showing, the Italian contingent looks bored to tears. Zesty Damián looks like he could pinch peppers all day.

Finally Flo starts whining about the heat and runs on home, while Paolo heads to the procesadora office to visit his new bestie Gabino. While Braulio fills Damián in on the real story behind Don Lucio’s “retirement,” Gabino spins Paolo the Arango-approved tale of Eliza coming onto him in the street. (OK; Blue Lass has changed her mind – he can’t be redeemed, no matter how nice he is to his horsey.)

Casita Azul:

Gabino shows up for a rendezvous with Carmina, “right on time,” he points out, just as she asked. But I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me? She circles him like a jungle cat and asks exactly what he would be prepared to do “to have a woman like her.” “Anything,” he says, and somehow he manages not to look like a whipped dog when he says it. (Dr. Tovar, take note.) I think we see where this is going…

But no! He wants trash-on-the-barrelhead, while she wants to run a tab. Scuffle, hiss, lárgates-all-around. Strike two for Team Orange!

Casa Padrino:

Damián drops by to visit Don Lucio and oh, by the way, offer him his old job back. Don Lucio demurs – are you really sure it’s your place to do that? Why are you going back to Mexico anyway – just to prove that mama's not the boss of you? Damián, in a confessing mood, admits not only that Lucio’s partly right, but also that he always dreamed about returning home and taking over the procesadora…but he has another reason to roll besides cutting the apron strings: he’s afraid he might fall in love with Eliza.

This is a telenovela, so of course Eliza is just about to come through the door with a pitcher of water. Cara muy impactada de Eliza, pitcher muy impactada on the floor. Eliza rabbits off. Oopsie, says Blanca – clumsy me!

Casa Castañon:

Paolo shows up to mack on Eliza, who asks him what part of “not even remotely interested” he doesn’t understand. After he leaves, Carmina keeps her part of their little devil’s bargain by telling Eliza she should think twice. After all, she doesn’t have a lot of options in this town. Heckuva marketing plan there, tía.

Assgusto™ sort-of apologizes to Eliza about his latest outburst, but she wants to talk peppers. What if Doña Alfonsina really means it about buying up? Why can’t we plant the fallow fields, Daddy? Why? Why? Assgusto bahs, humbugs, and storms out as usual.

Casa Arango:

Damián walks in the front door and is greeted by Lady A, who demands to know where he was, what he was doing, and who he was with. Unsurprisingly, this gets up his nose, and he tells her he went to offer Don Lucio his old job back. You QUE QUE QUE??? He looks Mommy Dearest full in the face and enunciates very carefully: yes, his old job. At the pro-ce-sa-do-ra.

She squawks that he has no business hiring useless people. Oh, you mean like Paolo? Anyway, I thought you wanted me to take an interest. Alfie gets a gleam in her eye. Well, if you move back here, you can make all the decisions you want…once you’re married, of course. She’s not taking any chances. He says he’ll think about it. (Well, she didn’t say married to whom!)

The Only Restaurant in La Ermita

Damián joins Florencia and Begoña’s brats for dinner out, arriving just in time to keep Enrique from admiring Flo a little too much. The kids switch into rapid-fire gossip mode, running through all the latest scandals, real and imagined – the slap at the party, Eliza coqueteando a Gabino, the altercation with Don Lucio – they are amazed that Damián knows none of this. (Well, maybe he has other things to do -- like be a grown-up.) Then Enrique laughs that no one should be surprised about Eliza and Gabino: after all, she goes with everybody.

Uh-oh.

Dam elbows aside all the incensed middle-aged women in Viewerland and goes to the head of the smackline, where he picks up that pup and tosses him across the cantina like a sack o’ habaneros. He then storms out, with Flo following in tears – would you defend me like that? Would you? Damián can’t answer, which is answer enough.

Casa Arango: The Big Finish

Eliza makes a formal visit to Doña Alfonsina to talk business. Were you serious about buying up our crop? It doesn’t matter, says Alfie smugly, because your father would have to agree, and he doesn’t. We don’t need my father, says Eliza, holding her pointy little chin high: I will be planting my own fields. You go, girl!

More happenings around town:

Useless Vicente has his first day of actual real work at the procesadora. It doesn’t go well.

Ramona warns Carmina to lay off her niece. Listen here, witchy – no, you listen, slutzy – the conversation goes nowhere, and even the mule doesn’t think it’ll do any good.

Eliza fondles her amulet and looks all goofy. [Ai Virgencita, thank you for not giving me the dueling-amulets scene! I promise to be very, very good until my next recap.]

Irritating Ingrid™ pretends to sprain an ankle in front of Gael to gain access to the house. Padre Lupe is not best pleased but misses a chance to come clean – one of many, no doubt.

Carmina tries unsuccessfully to bribe the nurse at the blood lab with a string of pearls. Strike three!

Avances:

Lots of amulet action, and Enrique lobs a soft grounder to Flo on first base.

Labels: abismo

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